Remember how a few posts back I said all kinds of fun things about Joanna Chmielewska and recommended her books as an easy and painless choice for a beginner Polish reader?<\/p>\n
Hmmm\u2026 Not so, apparently. This is what our fabulous guest blogger, Barb from Canada had to say about her experiences of reading Chmielewska. But not only Chmielewska. Barb tackled a few other books and this is what she has to say:<\/p>\n
My commitment to learning Polish naturally included reading Polish books. Up until last year, the only Polish book I had ever read was Sienkiewicz<\/strong>\u2019s \u201cW pustyni i w puszczy<\/strong><\/em>\u201d (assigned reading in Polish school).\u00a0 I wanted to read books written by Polish authors that had a distinctive Polish voice or soul (dusza polska<\/strong>), not books translated into Polish.\u00a0 Scanning the shelves at our local library (biblioteka<\/strong>) wasn\u2019t very helpful, so I approached a friend and asked to borrow (po\u017cyczy\u0107<\/strong>) a few books.<\/p>\n I started with \u201cJestem nudziar\u0105<\/strong><\/em>\u201d by M. Szwaja<\/strong>. A light, easy read that falls into the genre of \u201cchick lit\u201d.\u00a0 The book was very contemporary (wsp\u00f3\u0142czesna<\/strong>), exposed me to female dialogues and relationships with men\u2026 – tricky the world over, it seems.<\/p>\n Next, I tackled \u201cSzajka bez ko\u0144ca<\/strong><\/em>\u201d by J. Chmielewska<\/strong>.\u00a0 Chmielewska<\/strong> is a very popular and humorous author of criminal mysteries\/adventures (powie\u015bci sensacyjnych i kryminalnych<\/strong>).\u00a0 Other than the novelty of having a few chapters set in Barry\u2019s Bay, home to Polish-Canadian cottaging and scouting camps (obozy harcerskie<\/strong>) with unpleasant memories of scratchy grey wool uniforms (mundurki<\/strong>), the book fell flat for me.<\/p>\n These reading exercises sound painless right?\u00a0 They were excruciating actually.\u00a0 My need to slowly mouth each word, besides causing dry-mouth, quickly got tiresome.\u00a0 My other challenge was deciding how often to consult my dictionary (s\u0142ownik<\/strong>).\u00a0 Mostly, I tried to ascertain the meaning of a word from the context of a given paragraph.\u00a0 I did have a 4-word rule however: if an unknown word appeared four times within a single sitting I would look it up.<\/p>\n Much of my initial frustration centered around making the link between \u201cknown\u201d words and \u201cunknown\u201d spelling (ortografia<\/strong>).\u00a0 Inevitably, I would be struggling my way through a 5-syllable word (why do Polish words have so many syllables btw?), only to experience an \u201cI know that word, so that\u2019s how it\u2019s spelled\u201d moment.\u00a0 Embedding those written letter patterns with the known word sounds in my head was painful.\u00a0 I have much better French letter pattern recognition due to years of aimlessly reading bilingual cereal boxes over breakfast.<\/p>\n My word recognition and reading speed eventually improved which also resulted in less \u201cdry-mouth\u201d.\u00a0 After a time, I decided that I should also read out loud every day.\u00a0 Having a greatly inflated opinion of my abilities (did I mention that I have a confidence problem?) I wanted to give \u201cvoice\u201d to the lovely prose I could \u201chear\u201d in my head.\u00a0 What a disaster!! (co za pora\u017cka<\/strong>).\u00a0 More about my pronunciation and verbal abilities in another post.<\/p>\n Eventually, I hope to work up to some serious Polish literature (literatura polska<\/strong>).\u00a0 One of my goals is to read \u201cPan Wo\u0142odyjowski<\/strong><\/em>” by H. Sienkiewicz<\/strong>, a book I\u2019m rather sentimental about.<\/p>\n PS. Barb, you too? \u201cPan Wo\u0142odyjowski\u201d<\/strong> is something that I want to read as well. I\u2019m very sentimental about the TV series. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Remember how a few posts back I said all kinds of fun things about Joanna Chmielewska and recommended her books as an easy and painless choice for a beginner Polish reader? Hmmm\u2026 Not so, apparently. This is what our fabulous guest blogger, Barb from Canada had to say about her experiences of reading Chmielewska. But…<\/p>\n